Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined today as usual by staff
Speaker 1: writer Josh Clark. How their dash say their Candida, So
Speaker 1: I'm fabulous, So Candice is, I'm sure unless you've been
Speaker 1: living under a rock and you know, if you're deaf
Speaker 1: to the timber of Morgan Freeman's voice, you are well
Speaker 1: aware that the summer has been all about the Olympics, right,
Speaker 1: Oh naturally, So, I mean the eyes of the world
Speaker 1: are on Beijing and China's looking back saying what are
Speaker 1: you looking at? You know, um there looking at your
Speaker 1: sm That's right, Yeah, that was that was a big deal.
Speaker 1: Poor China has been very, very heavily criticized since they
Speaker 1: got the Olympics. They are making a sustained effort to
Speaker 1: alleviate that though, I will say, yeah, they are. I
Speaker 1: read recently that they have lifted the internet restrictions that
Speaker 1: they had based on on internet access for journalists who
Speaker 1: are in the country right now. Um, they had promised
Speaker 1: there would be no internet restriction for journalists, then there was,
Speaker 1: and then they repealed it for the rest of the country.
Speaker 1: It's Internet restrictions as usual, like you can't get on
Speaker 1: any site that has anything to do with Tibet Taiwan. Apparently,
Speaker 1: UM Amnesty International is not a very easily accessed site
Speaker 1: over there in China. And so that's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why the International Olympic Committee was criticized for giving
Speaker 1: the the Olympics two thousand eight Olympics to Beijing. Right,
Speaker 1: Supposedly the Olympics are um there about freedom and humanity
Speaker 1: coming together and table tennis. You know, that's exactly what
Speaker 1: the Greeks originally meant it for. Because you know, of
Speaker 1: course you wrote an article about how the first Olympics work.
Speaker 1: I did I did? When were they held? Like the
Speaker 1: sixth century a long long time so, and they were
Speaker 1: first held in Olympia. Looks like I need to read
Speaker 1: my own articles. Yes, they were held in the lower
Speaker 1: and they used to compete for olive oil and stuff
Speaker 1: like that and women and hide and lunch for life story.
Speaker 1: You know, you know, uh, the Greeks that that's just
Speaker 1: one of many things that is still around in our
Speaker 1: modern world that we can thank the Greeks for, um,
Speaker 1: other things like calculus, theater astronomy. Yeah, I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: you know that your favorite show, Gossip Girl, it's based
Speaker 1: on Greek dramatic theory. You realize that, right, that lit
Speaker 1: degree you have on your bell, you can thank guys
Speaker 1: like Homer for that, for creating modern literature. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot more esoteric things that the Greeks gave
Speaker 1: to us to like the concept that the uh, the
Speaker 1: the universe is laid out in a rational way. Or
Speaker 1: how about that we have two different selves. A higher
Speaker 1: self that thinks of things like spirituality and pursues knowledge,
Speaker 1: and then there's a lower selve which is gravitating towards
Speaker 1: baser instincts like our sexual the type and addiction physical
Speaker 1: desires by the lower self. Unfortunately, it's something I struggle
Speaker 1: with forging forward. But yeah, So so since the universe is,
Speaker 1: you know, laid out through reason, we can use reason
Speaker 1: irrational inquiry to explore it, right. Yeah. And what's fascinating
Speaker 1: about the Greeks is that they didn't always have this
Speaker 1: erudite civilization. There's something called the Greek Dark Ages, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which was fascinating to me because I associate terms like
Speaker 1: dark Ages and Renaissance with Britain essentially. But apparently this
Speaker 1: was a cycle that happened in Greece long before it
Speaker 1: ever did over in England. We're talking back and um
Speaker 1: right around. Yeah, that my sitting an empire and explicably
Speaker 1: crumbled and these have been people of learning and trade. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden the lines just went out. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and basically Greece turned inward. For about five undred years,
Speaker 1: all trade ceased, um, politics ceased. It was basically it
Speaker 1: was licking its wounds almost. And then about six b C.
Speaker 1: We have the Olympics, we have Homer writing the Iliad.
Speaker 1: It's just this huge explosion of knowledge, right, and this
Speaker 1: is what we identify as classical Greek, right, the Greece
Speaker 1: that we know of. Right. We also see the birth
Speaker 1: of the democratic republic, one of the most famous hallmarks
Speaker 1: of ancient Greek culture. Yes, the Socratic method of teaching. Um, basically,
Speaker 1: physicians weren't around before then. Happocrates medicine. Yeah. So so
Speaker 1: the Greeks gave us pretty much everything that we base
Speaker 1: our world on now. And frankly, I guess the way
Speaker 1: I would put it is that before the Greeks, you know,
Speaker 1: started dropping knowledge on the world scene. Everybody on the
Speaker 1: planet was just running around like a bunch of idiots.
Speaker 1: So I would say, is that factor of fiction. Well, Josh,
Speaker 1: it's not entirely an impos civil theory, but there was
Speaker 1: actually a civilization that influenced the Greeks to an incredible extent.
Speaker 1: And I know, hold the phone. We're talking about the chemites,
Speaker 1: and these are the people of ancient Egypt. And you know,
Speaker 1: we all know what ancient Egypt was responsible for. You know,
Speaker 1: we have the Pyramids, we have the Sphinx, we have
Speaker 1: incredible knowledge and fields like um, astronomy and medicine. There
Speaker 1: was a very ancient I guess medicine practitioner, Imo tap
Speaker 1: and his observations about disease and the human physiology would
Speaker 1: later influence even Hippocrates when he became the father of medicine.
Speaker 1: And what I mean you and we've talked about the
Speaker 1: Pyramids before in how in the Wonders of the world
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. This is like ancient, remote antiquity,
Speaker 1: though is and how could it possibly influence the Greeks. Well, essentially,
Speaker 1: they weren't so isolated from the Greeks. The Greeks knew
Speaker 1: that the chemites were doing a pretty good scholarly thing
Speaker 1: over in their corner of the world, and so they
Speaker 1: would actually travel to Egypt for university essentially, and they
Speaker 1: would go and and study with the chem It's there
Speaker 1: was actually a forty year program that scholars were expected
Speaker 1: to follow. It's a pretty serious commitment. And this forty
Speaker 1: year program turned out a man who essentially was both
Speaker 1: scholar and priest. No man in general, that was the
Speaker 1: idea of scholar slash priest. That's kind of a long program,
Speaker 1: especially considering the life expectancy for that time, probably wasn't
Speaker 1: too terribly longer than forty years. No, and as far
Speaker 1: as we know, no one from Greece completed the program.
Speaker 1: I think that Pythagorast got the farthest was at Fagoras, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he did twenty three years. Well yeah, And so what
Speaker 1: you're saying is that the Greeks actually traveled to Egypt
Speaker 1: to learn. They didn't come up with their ideas on
Speaker 1: their own. Well, not exactly. It would sort of be like,
Speaker 1: you know, going to university today and taking a class
Speaker 1: in literature and then essentially you know, taking the fundamentals
Speaker 1: that you learn about reading poetry and understanding allegory and symbolism,
Speaker 1: and then later on, twenty years down the road, interpreting
Speaker 1: a brain new poem with these fundamentals that you that
Speaker 1: you've honed in class under experts, essentially, And they had
Speaker 1: this system called the cometic mystery system, and this comprised
Speaker 1: math and writing, and physical science, and religion and the supernatural.
Speaker 1: And this relates back to the idea of the scholar
Speaker 1: priest that I was talking about earlier, and the notion
Speaker 1: was that you would take all these different components of
Speaker 1: intelligence and sort of amalgamate them into really rational explanations
Speaker 1: about the universe. And one of the first Greek scholars
Speaker 1: to go of Or and study with the Chamas was
Speaker 1: able to harness these skills take them back and he
Speaker 1: used his knowledge to accurately predict solar eclipse, and he
Speaker 1: showed the Greeks how you can measure the distance of
Speaker 1: a ship at sea attention precisely, and went credibility to
Speaker 1: the system. And so you had more and more people
Speaker 1: going over to Egypt to study, people like Hippocrates, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato.
Speaker 1: They all went, well, let me ask you this. Then,
Speaker 1: did the Greeks like hide the fact that that they
Speaker 1: went to Africa to learn. Why don't we know this,
Speaker 1: I mean, why do we thank the Greeks and not
Speaker 1: the chemites. There's a couple of theories behind us, and
Speaker 1: the first is that the idea of Enlightenment and that
Speaker 1: movement also originated out of Europe, and that really pushed
Speaker 1: the idea upon people that intelligence was about rationality. It
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with ideas pertaining to the supernatural
Speaker 1: or to spirituality. So there was a very strict economy there,
Speaker 1: and that could very well explain why. And more, credence
Speaker 1: wasn't lent to the kmetic mystery system because it did
Speaker 1: include science and physics. Are the supernatural? Yeah, Europe was
Speaker 1: looking for scholars, they weren't really looking for scholar priests.
Speaker 1: So the Greeks basically just took the rational reason part
Speaker 1: out of their their what they were taught. Yes, and
Speaker 1: now I think that that was a part that they
Speaker 1: honed and that was the part that was appreciated with
Speaker 1: scholarly circles, and that was I guess passed down through
Speaker 1: generations of scholars. But there's also a more controversial explanation
Speaker 1: for that too. You like this on a controversy. Well,
Speaker 1: hold onto your seat. Um. Another thing that emerged out
Speaker 1: of Europe was prejudice toward the African continent. And I
Speaker 1: I feel pretty safe in saying that because we've all
Speaker 1: read stories about you know, colonial exploits and that continent.
Speaker 1: You know, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite, well not my favorite, but it's a very
Speaker 1: poignant example of what uh a wealthy and learned people's
Speaker 1: interpretation of natives is. You know, these people are living
Speaker 1: in land that they don't you know, they don't know
Speaker 1: what value it holds monetarily, They're not using their full
Speaker 1: capabilities of their minds and bodies. And so I think
Speaker 1: a lot of Europeans and Westerners in general thought these
Speaker 1: people couldn't possibly have come up with something so sophisticated
Speaker 1: as things like astronomy or math. But in fact they did.
Speaker 1: And so there have been plenty of scholars these days,
Speaker 1: and you know, plenty of activists who have been setting
Speaker 1: to right the wrongs of these past perceptions, and so
Speaker 1: we are starting to re recognize, not to stutter, re
Speaker 1: recognize the contributions of the Chamites. Well that's good, Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thanks for clearing that up my higher and lower self
Speaker 1: both thank you for that than just the handwaves. Fine,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn even more about the Chamites,
Speaker 1: you can read did the ancient Greeks get their ideas
Speaker 1: from the Africans? On how to works dot or more
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